Photo Flash: Inside Opening Night of The Public's ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA with Joaquina Kalukango, Jonathan Cake & More

Directed and edited by Tarell Alvin McCraney, The Public's ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA is an international collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Miami's Gable Stage. The play opened last night, March 5, and runs through Sunday, March 23 in The Public's Anspacher Theater. BroadwayWorld brings you a look back at the opening night festivities below!

This unique company has been cast in both the U.S. and the U.K., and comprises five actors from each country to make up the cast of Shakespeare's historical play of love and politics. The U.S. cast features Charise Castro Smith (Octavia, Iras); Joaquina Kalukango (Cleopatra); Ian Lassiter (Agrippa, Thyreus); Chivas Michael (Mardian, Eros, Soothsayer); and Henry Stram (Lepidus, Proculeius). The U.K. cast features Jonathan Cake (Mark Antony); Samuel Collings (Octavius); Ash Hunter(Pompey, Alexas, Scarus); Chukwudi Iwuji (Enobarbus); and Sarah Niles (Charmian, Menas).

At the fringes of a war-torn empire, a man and a woman have fallen desperately, passionately in love. But for a soldier set to enforce the imperial will and the queen intent on throwing off the yoke of the empire, there is no place for personal desire. McCraney creates a stripped down, new version of Shakespeare's gripping story of romance set against a world of imperial politics and power play and transports us to 18th century, sun-soaked Saint-Domingue on the eve of revolution.